Know exactly what you're buying or investing in
We conduct thorough code audits and technical due diligence for acquisitions, investments, and major business decisions, giving you clarity before you commit.
Overview
A codebase that demos well in a sales call can still be built on a foundation that would cost enormous time and money to actually scale, secure, or maintain, and that gap between how a product presents and what's actually underneath it is precisely the risk technical due diligence exists to surface before it becomes your problem. Whether you're acquiring a company, making a significant investment, or evaluating a critical vendor relationship, the technical reality of what you're buying into deserves the same rigor as the financial and legal review it's typically paired with.
We conduct thorough, honest code audits that go well beyond a surface-level scan, examining code quality and architecture, but also the less visible risks: security vulnerabilities that haven't yet been exploited but represent real exposure, technical debt that's currently manageable but will compound as the system scales, dependency on outdated or unmaintained technology, and whether the engineering team's practices and capabilities genuinely match what the codebase demands going forward. Every audit is calibrated to the specific decision it's informing, since the technical risk tolerance for a small feature acquisition looks very different from due diligence on a company you're planning to build your entire business around.
The output is a clear, actionable report you can genuinely use, not a wall of technical jargon that requires an engineer to translate for the people actually making the decision. Findings are prioritized by real severity and relevance to your specific situation, distinguishing genuine deal-relevant red flags from lower-priority observations that are worth knowing but shouldn't derail a decision on their own. For time-sensitive deals, we can compress our standard timeline significantly while maintaining the same rigor, since we understand due diligence often happens under real deadline pressure that a leisurely audit schedule doesn't accommodate.
What we do
Clarity on technical risk before you make a decision that's hard to undo.
Comprehensive Code Quality & Architecture Review
We examine the codebase's actual structure and quality, not just whether it currently works, but whether it's built in a way that will hold up as the product scales, as new engineers join the team, and as new features get layered on over time. This includes assessing code organization and consistency, test coverage and whether it actually protects against regressions or exists mostly for appearance, the presence and severity of accumulated technical debt, and architectural decisions that may have made sense at an earlier stage but now represent a genuine constraint on the company's ability to grow or pivot. We look specifically for patterns that indicate deeper systemic issues rather than isolated problems, since a single messy module might just reflect one rushed sprint, while pervasive inconsistency across the entire codebase often signals a lack of engineering discipline or process that's a much more significant finding for a due diligence context. This review also assesses documentation quality and how much institutional knowledge exists only in specific individuals' heads, a real risk if the deal involves personnel changes or if key engineers might not stay through a transition.
Security & Infrastructure Risk Assessment
Beyond code quality, we evaluate the security posture of the application and its infrastructure, since security vulnerabilities represent a category of risk that can be invisible until actively exploited, at which point it becomes an urgent, expensive problem rather than a preventable one. This includes reviewing authentication and authorization implementations, data handling and storage practices particularly around sensitive or regulated data, dependency vulnerabilities across the stack, and infrastructure configuration for common misconfigurations that create exposure. We also assess compliance posture where relevant, whether the company's practices genuinely align with claims made about SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, or other frameworks that may matter significantly depending on the industry and the nature of the deal. This assessment is calibrated to actual exploitability and business impact rather than flagging every theoretical vulnerability with equal weight, since a due diligence report drowning in low-severity findings makes it harder, not easier, to see the risks that genuinely matter to your decision.
Prioritized Risk Report & Decision Support
The value of a technical audit lives entirely in whether the resulting report is actually usable by the people making the decision, who are often not primarily technical themselves. We deliver findings organized by genuine severity and relevance to your specific transaction, clearly distinguishing critical, deal-relevant red flags from moderate findings worth factoring into valuation or post-acquisition planning, from minor observations that are informational but shouldn't influence the core decision. Where relevant, we quantify findings in terms that matter to a business decision, estimated remediation effort and cost for significant technical debt, realistic timelines for addressing critical security gaps, or an honest assessment of whether the current team can execute against your post-acquisition plans given their current capacity and skill composition. We're also available to walk through findings directly with your decision-makers, answering follow-up questions and providing context a written report alone can't fully capture, since due diligence conversations often raise new questions in real time that benefit from direct access to the people who actually did the technical review.
Our Process
- 01
Scoping & Decision Context Alignment
We start by understanding the specific decision this audit is informing, an acquisition, an investment, a vendor evaluation, since the appropriate depth and focus of the review depends heavily on context. A small feature acquisition warrants a different scope than due diligence on a company you're planning to build your core business around, and we calibrate accordingly rather than applying a one-size-fits-all checklist.
- 02
Codebase & Infrastructure Access & Initial Survey
Once access is arranged, we conduct an initial survey of the codebase, technology stack, and infrastructure to understand overall scale, architecture, and technology choices before diving into detailed review. This survey helps us allocate deeper review time toward the areas most relevant to risk and most material to your specific decision.
- 03
Detailed Code Quality & Security Review
We conduct the core technical review, examining code quality, architecture, test coverage, technical debt, security posture, and infrastructure configuration in depth. This phase involves both automated analysis tools and genuine manual review by experienced engineers, since automated scanning alone misses architectural and design-level issues that require human judgment to properly evaluate.
- 04
Team & Process Assessment
Where relevant to the decision, we assess the engineering team's practices, documentation habits, and institutional knowledge distribution, since a technically sound codebase supported by a team with poor practices or excessive key-person dependency still represents real risk, particularly in an acquisition scenario involving personnel transitions.
- 05
Findings Synthesis & Report Delivery
We synthesize all findings into a clear, prioritized report tailored to your decision-making context, distinguishing genuine red flags from lower-priority observations, and quantifying findings in business-relevant terms wherever possible. We remain available afterward to walk through findings directly and answer follow-up questions as your decision-making process continues.
Code audit technology coverage
We audit codebases across a wide range of modern languages and infrastructure platforms.
Frequently Asked Questions
Technical due diligence is specifically calibrated to inform a business decision, an acquisition, investment, or major vendor evaluation, and the findings are framed around deal-relevant risk and business impact rather than purely technical code quality feedback. The scope, depth, and reporting format all reflect that decision-making context rather than being a generic engineering assessment.
Yes, we regularly work within compressed timelines for time-sensitive deals, since due diligence often happens under real deadline pressure. We prioritize the highest-risk areas first to ensure the most deal-relevant findings are available quickly, even if a more exhaustive review would ideally take longer under less time pressure.
The report is specifically written to be usable by decision-makers who may not be deeply technical themselves, prioritizing findings by genuine business relevance and severity rather than presenting an undifferentiated technical dump. We're also available to walk through findings directly, which often surfaces important context a written report alone can't fully convey.
Where relevant to the decision, yes. Code quality alone doesn't capture the full risk picture; a well-built codebase overly dependent on institutional knowledge held by one or two key people, particularly ones who might not stay through a transition, represents real risk that a purely code-focused review would miss entirely.
We report genuine critical findings clearly and promptly rather than softening them to avoid an uncomfortable conversation, since the entire value of technical due diligence depends on honest assessment. How that finding affects the deal itself is ultimately your decision, but our job is making sure you have an accurate picture to base that decision on.
Yes, this is often one of the most valuable parts of the assessment. Beyond general code quality, we evaluate whether the current architecture and team can realistically support your specific growth or integration plans, since a codebase that's perfectly adequate for its current scale might not hold up under the plans you actually have for it.
We've conducted audits across a wide range of languages, frameworks, and architectural styles, and adapt our specific review approach to whatever technology stack is involved. The underlying principles of the assessment, code quality, security, technical debt, and team capability, apply consistently regardless of the specific technology.
This depends on the deal stage and scope, but generally we need code repository access, infrastructure documentation or access, and often conversations with key engineering team members. For earlier-stage or more sensitive deal negotiations, we can work with more limited access initially and expand scope as the deal progresses toward closing.
Other Technical Consulting & Architecture Services
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